Saturday, August 29, 2015

An Eye for an Eye

August 29, 2015

Dear Pastors:

The WORD OF GOD is very plain and easy to be understood if one would just take a bit of time and give studious attention to what THE SCRIPTURES TEACH. THE JEWS are central to all Scriptural teaching, as is plain in Psalms 83!

2 For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.

3 They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones.

4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.

5 For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:

6 The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes;

7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre;

8 Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah.

9 Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kison:

10 Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth.

11 Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna:

12 Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession.

13 O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind.

14 As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire;

15 So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm.

16 Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O LORD.

17 Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish:

18 That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.

Having looked at that, let us examine two stories – one from Israel, the other from America:

Israel completes settler withdrawal plan

Bush: Establish 'working government in Gaza'

Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Posted: 4:21 p.m. EDT (20:21 GMT)

Bottom of Form

SANUR, West Bank (CNN) -- Israel evacuated the last settlers and protesters from the West Bank settlement of Homesh on Tuesday, the military said, completing its historic withdrawal of civilians from 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.

"Today, we accomplished the first phase of the disengagement process ... related to evacuation of the civilians," Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz said.

Israeli forces plan to remove the settlers' belongings and destroy their houses and then withdraw from Gaza.

Authorities used force at times Tuesday to clear the two remaining West Bank settlements -- Homesh and Sanur.

Before Sanur was evacuated, forces used a crane and container to remove protesters from the roof of an old fortress in the settlement. In Homesh, demonstrators in a school refused to move and security forces picked them up and carried them away.

Israel completed its withdrawal from 21 settlements in Gaza on Monday, and settlers had been evacuated from the other West Bank settlements included in the plan -- Ganim and Kadim.

About 120 Jewish settlements remain in the West Bank after the evacuations, according to the Israel-based Web site peacenow.org.il.

President Bush, asked a question Tuesday by reporters about the next step in the region, called on Palestinians to establish "a working government in Gaza, a government that responds to the people."

Bush said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas "has made a commitment to fight off" Palestinian "violence because he understands a democracy can't exist with terrorist groups trying to take the law into their own hands."

Earlier, authorities said about 600 people remained in Sanur -- as many as 200 of them anti-withdrawal activists.

Military cranes lifted a cargo container which carried police to the top of the fortress that served as Sanur's community center. Police removed about 50 protesters who had barricaded themselves on the roof.

On the outside of the stone fortress, a banner declared: "A curse upon those who evacuate us."

About 300 settlers who had barricaded themselves inside the fortress also were removed, commanders said.

About five miles away in Homesh, Israeli forces raided a religious school, where about 40 protesters waited. They sat praying and singing with arms and legs locked to make their removal more difficult.

Television images broadcast from inside the school showed Israeli soldiers struggling with the student protesters, slowly extracting one at a time and carrying them to a waiting bus outside.

Other soldiers negotiated with students, attempting to get them to give up and leave.

Two settlers, one in Homesh and one in Sanur, tried to stab Israeli soldiers, the Israel Defense Forces said. In Homesh, a settler who was drunk was arrested after attempting to stab a soldier, IDF said.

In Sanur, a civilian stabbed a female soldier during a scuffle, the IDF said, describing the soldier's wounds as light. The civilian was taken into custody.

The clearance of Homesh and Sanur marked the end of the "main part" of Sharon's disengagement process -- the settlements must still be demolished, said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir.

"A process that the Israel government ... took upon itself in order to extend our hand in peace to the Palestinians," Meir said. "This is what Israel is willing to do in order to live in peace with the Palestinians."

He said now is the time "for the Palestinians to disengage themselves from terror and violence."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has invested much of his political future in his pullout plan, which is aimed at invigorating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Katrina originated over the Bahamas on August 23 from the interaction between a tropical wave and the remnants of Tropical Depression Ten. Early the following day, the new depression intensified into Tropical Storm Katrina. The cyclone headed generally westward toward Florida and strengthened into a hurricane only two hours before making landfall Hallandale Beach and Aventura on August 25. After very briefly weakening to a tropical storm, Katrina emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26 and began torapidly deepen. The storm strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, but weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on August 29 in southeast Louisiana.

Katrina caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge. The most significant number of deaths occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as its levee system failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland.

BRETHREN, DON’T MISS THE “EYE FOR AN EYE” TEACHING OF THE 2 DATES – SANUR, THE LAST OF THE 25 COMMUNITIES, 21 IN THE GUSH KATIF, GAZA, AND 4 IN THE SHOMROM – AGAIN, REPEATING MYSELF, SANUR BEING THE LAST DISENGAGED FROM ----THEN THE FORMATION OF KATRINA ---ON THE SAME DAY!

MESS WITH THE JEWS, AND GOD ALMIGHTY WILL EXACT AN “EYE FOR AN EYE!”

The US-MFO Exit from Sinai will Expose a Widening Circle of Mid East Waterways

After a well-orchestrated media campaign (including a New York Times leader calling for the US to pull the MFO from Sinai), for preparing the ground, Washington this week presented Israel and Egypt with a detailed blueprint for covering its retreat from the strategic Egyptian peninsula in the face of rising Islamic terrorism

The preamble noted that the danger of Islamic State attack increasingly confronts the 1,600 members of the Sinai Multinational Force and Observers (MFO).

They come from 12 nations and include the Texas Army National Guard Soldiers of the 1st Squadron, 112th Cavalry Regiment, which is posted near the Sharm El-Sheikh resort town in the South, and a number of US officers based in the northern camp at Gorah near El Arish.

The authors of the plan stress that it has accordingly become necessary to “alter the MFO’s mode of operation.”

Egypt’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy and the policy adviser at Israel’s Defense Ministry, AmosGilead, took the blueprint when it reached them as advance notice of Washington’s intention to withdraw from the MFO in Sinai as quickly as possible.

Since the US is the largest contributor to the MFO, with its Task Force Sinai comprising 692 military personnel, the inescapable conclusion was that once the Americans were out, the other nationals would soon follow suit and the MFO would be gone for good.

The MFO becomes redundant when treaty restrictions are eased

The US blueprint outlined three practical steps:

1. In the first stage, the force would close down 25 observations posts scattered across Sinai from north to south (see attached map) and evacuate the soldiers manning them. Each of these posts has 6-8 soldiers – some American – who would be easy prey for the Islamists – either to kill or take hostage.Until now, the Sinai branch of ISIS has refrained from major attacks on the multinational force, possibly to avoid stirring up international support for Egypt’s fight against them in North Sinai.But there have been incidents. On June 6, the Islamists fired shells towards Gorah airport, which is used by the MFO. There were no casualties. A more serious attack took place three years ago in September 2012, when the Gorah camp was set on fire and three foreign soldiers were injured.

2. The spread-out observation posts were set up originally to monitor the military restrictions imposed on Egypt in Sinai under the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty. But last year Israel relaxed those restrictions to let Cairo introduce a division plus and assault aircraft and helicopters to Sinai, to fight the Islamists terrorists.The MFO suddenly became redundant.

Replacing MFO observation posts with satellite surveillance

But its observation posts stayed in place and turned their efforts to keeping watch and reporting on the illicit paramilitary forces moving clandestinely around the peninsula, including armed Palestinian groups, various smuggling rings and ISIS.

In their place, Washington is offering the services of US military satellite for surveillance over the entire peninsula.

3. It is a little known fact that one part of the MFO’s American team was stationed on the highly strategic island of Tiran, which is situated in the narrowest part of the Straits of Tiran - an important sea passage for the important ports of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel.

A hostile force on that island, which separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aqaba, could block Israel’s only southern outlet from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Red Sea and out to the Far East.

The tiny 230 sq, km island is part of Egypt’s Ras Muhammad National Park, although the opposing claims to its sovereignty by Egypt and Saudi Arabia have never been resolved.

The US exit will leave Tiran island and vital sea passage unguarded

The American force’s exit from the island of Tiran, along with the rest of the MFO, will leave the essential strait without oversight and the shipping using it unprotected. The Sinai Bedouin, smugglers and ISIS adherents alike, keep track from their speedboats on the ships sailing in and out of the Gulf of Aqaba and using the Suez Canal. By seizing Tiran Island after the American troops’ departure, they would control these strategic straits. The Islamic State would not only strengthen its grip in the Sinai Peninsula, but directly imperil the national security interests of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel.

The US plans for Sinai, published here for the first time, left Israeli and Egyptian strategists stunned. If Washington goes through with them, the Middle East and, most of all, the Islamist State, would be free to conclude that if the Obama administration declines to stand its ground against 500 ISIS Sinai terrorists, it can hardly be relied on to fight Islamist terror anywhere else.

BRETHREN, WITH SCRIPTURE – PSALMS 83 – SANUR, KATRINA, AND NOW THIS “AMERICAN FORCES EXIT” FROM THESE PLACES YONDER IN THE MIDDLE EAST – WE HAVE MUCH TO COGITATE UPON AND PRAY ABOUT ---AS WE PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM!!

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Me and the Bride of My Youth

About the Author

Yedidim (Friends) of Israel is a collaboration of over 7,600 independent Baptist churches in America.
Dr. Vineyard makes several trips a year to Israel to give humanitarian aid and encourage Israeli soldiers and the families of fallen soldiers.
Several groups of pastors have also been able to visit Israel in an effort to encourage the Israeli people in their on-going war against Islamic terrorism. Dr. Vineyard oversees these efforts.